The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-06-12
INDIAN MYTHS.
Account Of the Empire Before the Mo.
hammedan CONQUEST.
From the Estate Quarterly Reuie,O.

hammedan Conquest.
From the -Asiatic Quarterly Reuieu.
With reference to India and the Indian.
as they appeared to intelligent foreipners
who visited that country prior to the Mus
sulman conquests, it is said that, though dis.
figured by transparent exaggerations. theSo
descriptions were wonderfully accurate All
picturesque, and with few obvious cor TO-
tions are applicable at the present dav Al
imperfect knowledge of the language is
probably answerable for the fables and aba
writers, who simply copied from
their predecessors without the slightest at
tempt to sift truth from error or to investi-
gate the authorities, upon which utterly IN
credible statements We're made. Whenever
the narrators, were dealing with matters
that came under their personal cognizanca
they seemed to have kept within the bounds
prescribed by reason and moderation. 1t is
only when they repeated ON heresay ev;.
dence the marvellous stories which have
brought down upon them so much hastv
and lntolerant ridicule that they disnIavaS
total absence of the critical faculty T5oI.
accepted without hesitation the tales that
were told of men without noses
and with two orifices above the month
for the purpose OF breathing which, it has
been suggested, may have been an uncon.
scious caricature of the Mongols. The MO.
mics, only three spans in height, who were
warred upon by cranes and by partridpes aS
large as geese, may have been a dwar0sh
race dwelling in woods and at the foot Of
mountains who earned precarious IiyeT.
hood as bowmens, and trappers Bhotan
people, whose earS8re enormously elongated
by artificial means may have been renre-
sented as tribe whose ears reached
to the ground, and which were other
wise so huge that their owners wnra
able to coil themselves up and 90 to sleen
in them. The swift runners who could RIM
down horse might have found their analo-
gies within quite recent period and NAV
perchance still find them in some of the
native States. The fable of the gold dig-
cling ant, large as wild foxes has been long
since explained as referring to TibetaE
miners, men of low stature who inhabit the
mountainous country to the north of Kash-
mir. The animals mistaken for ants NAV
very well have been marmots. which are
said to be plentiful i'll those parts AS for
the monstrous shapes which no traveller
pretends to have seen with his own ewes
they existed, no doubt, inf bright colors on
the inner walls of pagodas, and were in
tended to depict the Rakshasas or de-
mons, odious alike to men
and gods. Such was the probable origin of
the beings who were born without mouths
and lived on the aroma of fruits and
flowers; or those whose feet were turned lie
wrong way, the heels being in front while
the instep and toes were behind: of those
who bore the head of dog and were fur
nished with claws. who lived by hunting
and fowling and clothed themselves in the
skins of wild beasts of those who had the
ears of dog, erect hair and shaggy breasts,
and with one eye in the centre of the
forehead; finally, of those without nos
trils, who devoured raw meat and all man
Of hon fr,.ak Al
ungainly creatures with the upper lip hang
ing over the lower. OF no greater i'm.
portance are the marvellous animals
enormously delineated rather than invented,
such as SerpentS with membranous wings.
that flew by night; horses with deers' heads
surmountea by black horn, with legs
without joint and with the tail of pig;
tigers twice the size of a lion; the phoenix,
sprung from the sun rays, that lived its
life of 5000 years i'll India, and, singing its
own dirge, died in its nest of aromatic
herbs hard by the fountains of the Nile. IL
would be sheer waste of time to bestow
further thought upon the childish inventions
fathered by Philostratus upon Apolfonius,
of Tyana, or rather upon the journal Of
his fellow traveller Damis. Quite as little
attention is due Latin writers who professed
to have derived their information from In
dian merchants settled at Alexandria, or
from apocryphal embassies supposed to
have been dispatched by Indian kings to
Roman emperors. In more than one of
these rCmances allusion is made to the load
stone islands in the Indian ocean, which
were believed to draw iron bolts out Of
ships at an incredible distance, and which
have been thus expi"ined by the fact that
the seas in question we're navigated by yes
sells the planks of which were bound
together by ropes and coir, without the use
of nails and bolts.